the tax cut deal, the big fights over the budget and the debt ceiling and deficit reduction, also the bin laden raid and what happened in egypt and libya. and so i'm looking at how obama made the decisions he made and took, why he took the actions he took in that very perilous time politically, but i also explain how this is all done in a way to set up the 2012 campaign that we just went through. he had a theory after he took that big hit in 2010, he had a theory that he could make the 2012 race a choice not just between him and mitt romney, but a choice between different ideologies, different approaches to government, between different sets of visions and values. and everything he did in that time frame he kept trying to tether to this big idea he had about a choice. and when i wrote the book, of course, we can't know how things would end up on november 6, 2012. but, um, i looked at how he developed his governing strategy and his electoral strategy, and it really culminated in november. so this is the back story to what happened in this presidential campaign. >> host: david corn, "sh